Vesty of the Basins Part 11

Miss Langham did not scream on seeing me now. She smiled upon me with manifest kindness and condescension. She had beautiful bright brown eyes, and the "style" of town life pervaded her very atmosphere.

"Doctor," said Notely, "Miss Langham has heard about you, and, ahem!

considering what she has heard, she is perfectly willing to make the first advances."

Dr. Spearmint bowed, stammering before such new bewitchment and beauty.

"I _look_ dreadful," he said, fingering his blue necktie.

"Oh, dear, no, doctor!" rippled out Miss Langham's voice, in willing accompaniment of the joke; "I'm sure you are perfectly charming!"

"Miss Langham is from New York," said Notely.

"There 's a great deal o' pa.s.sin' there, ain't there?" said Dr.

Spearmint in his soft voice, turning to her.

"What?" said she to Notely. "Oh, my! oh, how funny! oh dear, yes, doctor; you've no idea!"

"Some there 's worth----"

Notely, laughing, pressed with his muscular brown hand a note into Dr.

Spearmint's hand that would do more for his next winter's comfort than many weeks of dangleberrying.

"Miss Langham would like to have her fortune told, doctor," he said.

She pulled off her glove with a laughing grace. As Dr. Spearmint took her slender jewelled hand in his he trembled with vanity and happiness.

He brushed a joyful tear from his eye, and began:

"I see a bew-tiful future here," he said.

"Oh, my!" said Miss Langham, looking up at him, her mirthful eyes full of incredulous rapture.

"Yes, I see a tall man, quite a tall man."

Dr. Spearmint himself was quite a tall man.

"Dear me!" exclaimed Miss Langham.

"He has curly brown hair and a--a smooth face," said Dr. Spearmint, delighted in his delight. _He_ had curly brown hair and a smooth face.

"He has blue eyes"--he glanced, a little troubled, at Notely's big sparkling orbs--"_mild_ blue eyes," he corrected the statement, in such a soft voice!

"Indeed they must be _mild_," cried Miss Langham.

Dr. Spearmint coughed considerably, and blushed.

"He--he wears a blue necktie," he said, the mild blue eyes falling.

"O Dr. Spearmint! I believe--why, it must be _you_!" cried the merry girl, with a laugh as gay as rushing brooks.

The boys and girls in the audience laughed loudly at this not unexpected climax.

Dr. Spearmint, much embarra.s.sed, went inside to put away his money, but was seen to steal sly glances, and a rearrangement of the blue neck-ribbon in his little cracked mirror.

"Dew come again!" he said faintly, as they were going.

"Why, certainly, as the understanding is now, Miss Langham will expect to call often, I suppose," said Notely.

"Oh, dear me! yes," cried Grace Langham.

"Are we--ahem!"--Dr. Spearmint could not lift those mild blue eyes--"are we engaged?"--his sweet voice sinking, almost inaudible.

"Oh, positively, doctor! Why, of course! Oh, dear me! good-by, poor dear. Oh, how pathetically amusing!" said she, walking with Notely toward the carriage.

A tall girl had come up, and stood in the shadow, in the doorway.

Notely, catching a glimpse of her in pa.s.sing, lifted his cap, his face burning, his eyes glowing, with a look of intense love and of possession.

Grace Langham turned, with a woman's instinct.

Vesty, standing there, dim and tall, in her laceless, fashionless gown, met her glance with a long, serious look that contained nothing either of alarm or suspicion.

"I know," murmured Grace. "I've heard the name of 'Vesty'--_that_ is Vesty."

"That is Vesty," said her companion.

"And you love her, I believe," said Grace Langham to her own breast, but sighed aloud; a gentle, bewitching sigh that divined deeper of Notely's mood than further laughter would have done then.

As they pa.s.sed out of sight, riches and gay things and the last light of day seemed to go with them.

The mirth the children were having, congratulating Dr. Spearmint on his engagement, sounded crude.

"Nature has done so much for me, you know," he said, with his weak, throbbing vanity, his hand nervously on the blue tie.

Vesty went over to him and put both hands on his head.

The children hushed.

"Here are the pennies for my berries, Uncle Benny," she said quietly.

"I've taken just a quart."

"Yes, yes; all right, Vesty. I'm--ahem!--_engaged_, Vesty. Such a bew-tiful----"

Vesty held her hands on his head. "Uncle Benny" (she would never, even to please him, call him Dr. Spearmint), "you must not think of that.

She did not mean that. Besides, you have promised to be always a friend to me, don't you remember?--and to lead the children home from school. You know your mother expects"--they glanced up together at the picture--"that you will do what Jesus told you about doing--that about leading the little children home from school. What if one of them should get lost, or hurt? O Uncle Benny!"

"Oh, my!" he gasped. "I didn't think, Vesty," tears streaming down his pale but now placid and restored face.

Vesty smiled, standing there. A light crossed her face; she began to sing: